while reviewing some of the tennants that the nazi party held, i came across some interesting information. it stated that "all citizens must possess equal rights and duties... no individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all... all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished... we demand a generous increase in old-age pensions... we demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople... we demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose... we demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race..."
i could go on and on about welfare, healthcare, education, etc., but the post is already getting long. i was always under the impression that nazis were a fringe right-wing organization, but the more i look at it, the closer it resembles communism. it is apparent that national socialism promoted the common good over individual good. this communalism is more a trait of socialism than of the right, or am i mistaken? if so, please explain the major difference.
-j

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Я капиталист, конечно!

On a balance scale, they are on opposite ends and are each others natural enemies. Extremist Republicans and extremist Democrats love each other in comparison.

Nazis are pure evil, have Nazism excluding view of the world. "-We, are good and righteous and they are inferior and should be our slaves". Socialism has the opposite view, "we" for a socialist is really everybody, it's an inclusive view of the world. a true socialist are tolerant, a Nazi are not. I have strong socialistic feelings, are very tolerant but HATE Nazis because of their lack of tolerance. Actually, a good Christian and a good socialist have a very similar view of people, up to the point that I have often heard the the phrase "Jesus was the first socialist", not really true but the idea of helping and caring for each other exist for both the Christan and the socialist. There are also many religious socialists.

Don't misstate socialism for communism, Socialism are included in correctly built communism but can also exist in other systems like Social democracy that was inspired by the communistic idea but better suited for the reality.

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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche

stories4u and I clashed about this a while ago:
http://www.politicalforum.com/viewto...t=490&start=15

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi#Nazism_and_socialism
Does a pretty good job explaining it.

The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP, or what we all call the Nazis) had it's roots in socialist parties and thought, but it radically departed from it early on. I'm guessing you read one of their 20's mission statements, they do sound very socialist.

National Socialism never advocated the right the individual, always the right of the state. State first, the state then rewards the good citizens.

In a nutshell:
As a political system Nazism resembled beared little if any resemblance to socialism (though I know a few anti-communists will jump in and disagree )
Economically, there are more similarities to socialism, but the system that existed cannot be accurately described as socialist. (Corporations etc.)

One productive way to look at the differences is to see the similarities. Nazism, Socialism and Communism are all examples of Statism, which, at its simplest, says that the State owns you. They express it differently, clothe it in different rhetoric, but the end result is the loss of individual freedoms.

The opposite would be Classical Liberalism, now known in the US as libertarianism.

Put another way, some people feel they have the right to tell you how to live your life. Others just want to live their own life.

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Never moon a werewolf.

yeah, i did read the 25 mission statements of the nazis. it sounded very similar to many socialist party statements that i also read. the only difference i really saw was that nazis wanted it kept to national boundaries (although invading other countries certainly made it seem like an international agenda) and socialists seem to want it as an international program.
as for the claim that socialism promotes tolerance while national socialism promotes intolerance, it just seems a little, well, wrong. from what i've seen, they both promote intolerance. while hitler and his crew promoted hatred of jews and many christians, marx and his friends also promoted hatred of all religions. wasn't it marx who wrote that one article "a world without jews"? in it, if i read correctly, he seems to blame the religious as one of the many roots of the people's problems and says that all religion needs to be abolished. doesn't this smack of how hitler blamed the jews for the germans' problems? the more i compare the two, the more similar they seem. perhaps communism and national socialism did truly hate each other. but if they did, was it really because they were opposites, or was it because they were both fighting for the same spot?
-j

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Я капиталист, конечно!

Bingo. Give the man a cigar.

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Never moon a werewolf.

Socialism (a la Marx) was supposed to be entirely secular, believing that all religions should be abolished. This 'hatred' of Jews that Marx supposedly had, is a rather unconvincing argument, it's not very well proven. I don't remember Marx promoting hatred of religions, more denouncing them. At least it never advocated eugenics, and ethnic cleansing. There was no racial superiority argument by Marx.

Nazism promoted 'Aryan' (which is an artificial term in itself) superiority, and the the purification of the German people. This meant the elimination of all undesirables, in a highly systematic manner. Religion was never suppressed, and the church remainned operational throughout Nazi Germany, there were even Nazi Priests.

The manner at which both responded to the 'question' was quite drastic. Marx proposed a secular state. Hilter proposed the endlösung.

Then you'll have trouble proving why other Fascists governments, and parties, not of all who had territorial disputes/demands with the USSR, hated the "judeo-bolshevik monster".

Nazism does not match Socialism as a political system.
Nazism does not match Socialism as an economic system.
So to speak, where's the beef?

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I am fully aware of the fact that Marx proposed a secular world and I am fully for a secular society, BUT with room for the individual to be as religious as they want. Also note, Marx was one of many people at his time that dreamed up "ideal" societies. Many people has been inspired by his work and has tried to implement his ideas, fully or in parts. Social Democracy for instance is such a system that has adopted parts of Communism but changes what was believed to not work well in the reality. This is why I say that it is possible for a person to be both a socialist AND a Christian. Social Democracy also accept the existence of corporations and has instead concentrated their work on creating strong trade unions that works on making sure that the workers get a reasonable compensation for their efforts. My point is that what Marx created has has grown to a wide array of ideas on the political left wing, not all of this is Communism and even the COmmunist parties that exist may have different ideas. Basically Marx created the political left wing but it is huge....

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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche

you say that religion wasn't suppressed in the nazi regime, but this seems like a false claim. if you read some of the nuremberg papers, it describes what the nazis really felt about christianity and religion as a whole. at first i thought that his hatred was only directed towards jews, but it seems that i was wrong. he, much like marx, detested all religion. the only problem he saw was that he would not gain popularity by abolishing christianity. so, in order to keep up support, he allowed many of the more popular christian churches to remain. while doing this, he also was able to declare illegal the less popular christian churches, and thus arrested all members of them. the remaining churches were forced to obey strict laws based on nazi policy. whoever did not obey were arrested. this way, nazis were able to infiltrate churches and manipulate public opinion.
and i believe it was hitler who said, "we are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." hmm, interesting.
-j

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Я капиталист, конечно!